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“Every evidence of tenderness, compassion, or forgiveness in your life is an indication of God’s mothering presence. “

By Valerie Minard

Waking up one morning during a very demanding time in my life, one of my first thoughts was, “I wish I had a mother!” Although I have two children of my own, I yearned for the comfort of a close mother-daughter relationship–with me as the daughter. Not only did I yearn to be comforted, but to have the loving counsel of a wise and supportive parent. Then on the heels of that thought came another: You do have a mother— your Mother-Father God that is always providing good and expressing unconditional love toward you.

That might sound unusual to someone who thinks of God only as Father. Although the Bible talks a lot about God’s Fatherhood, there are several verses that bring out God’s Motherhood as well. For instance, in Isaiah it says, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” (1) And “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.” (2) And from Revelation: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; ” (3) And indeed Jesus promised another Comforter. (4)

Building on this concept, Christian theologian Mary Baker Eddy writes in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. As the apostle expressed it in words which he quoted with approbation from a classic poet: “For we are also His offspring.” (5)

It makes sense to me that God is both Father and Mother and is not a single parent. Why would God make both male and female after His own image and likeness but only be Father? Appreciating God as including both Father and Mother qualities gives insights into our own character and nature. For instance, there have been times in my own life that I’ve prayed to see more clearly God’s fatherly qualities of strength, protection, provision, integrity, and justice. This has brought an assurance that I would be safe and my needs supplied.

Other times, I’ve prayed to see more of God’s motherly qualities, such as mercy, forgiveness, love, tenderness, and compassion, both in myself and others. This has helped me overcome loneliness through the recognition that God’s goodness is always with me. Praying in both these ways has not only enlarged my concept of God but helped me understand my relationship with Him/Her.

Marta Greenwood found the understanding of God’s motherhood to be a healing power when she and her husband finally became parents. They had become overprotective of their young daughter, who was sickly and was receiving medical attention for an eating disorder and retarded growth, among other problems.

At some point, Marta began to study Science and Health, and the concept of God’s Motherhood resonated with her. “Discovering God as Mother,” she said, “was the revolution I so desperately needed.” She saw this meant that God maintained and preserved her daughter’s life and cared for herself as well, as her Mother’s loved child. “I no longer saw myself only as a wife or a mother but as a loved child of God. I felt such freedom and joy, and I stopped worrying about [my daughter].”

As Marta’s fear lessened and her trust in our divine Mother grew, she stopped worrying and her daughter began to blossom. With this new sense of God’s mothering came a trust that God would always be attentive to their needs. And this change of consciousness proved to have a healing effect. All the physical problems Marta’s daughter had been formerly treated for disappeared, and the family never looked back. (See full story here.)

So as Mother’s Day approaches, don’t despair if your mother or another mother-figure is not present, or if you don’t have a close relationship with her. Or, if you are struggling with how to be a good mother yourself, there is hope. God’s loving, mothering qualities are all around you. Every evidence of tenderness, compassion, or forgiveness in your life is an indication of God’s mothering presence. As you learn to cherish these more in your life, they will bring the comfort you seek and fill any void.

Valerie Minard writes regularly on the connection between consciousness, spirituality, and health. She is a Christian Science practitioner and the media and legislative spokesperson for Christian Science in New Jersey. Contact her at newjersey@compub.org or on Twitter @valerieminard.

Isaiah 66:13

Isaiah 40:11

Revelation 21:4

John 14:16

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, 516:21

She never married or had children. But Nancy was as close to a wonderful mother as I could have had. She was my Sunday School teacher for several years. But it wasn’t until my teens that I really got to know her.

At first, we would go out for hot chocolate after church. I would tell her about school and my family troubles since my mom’s divorce and remarriage. Then, as time went on, I would stop by her house for lunch or dinner. Slowly, our relationship grew as we informally “adopted” each other as mother and daughter.

I valued her unconditional love, intelligence, wisdom, unselfishness, courage, and complete reliance on God. Her whole life was devoted to helping others. She saw something in me that I yearned to see in myself, which gave me hope for a good future.

It’s been some time since Nancy passed on, but I still think of her and how privileged I was to have had her in my life. Now, as a mother myself, what I especially value are the qualities she expressed because they gave me a glimpse of the motherhood of God.

The Bible, referring to God, says, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you”. And Christ Jesus taught about a loving, forgiving God, who would never leave us comfortless.

Health researcher and Christian theologian, Mary Baker Eddy, explained this concept further. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she wrote, “Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation”. She also defined “Mother” in this way: “God; divine and eternal Principle; Life, Truth, and Love”.

We all have a tender relationship with our Father-Mother God. This divine Parent is totally good and loves us unconditionally. Our Mother-God is always with us – comforting, supporting, guiding, and governing every event of our lives.

If we make a mistake, we are encouraged and nudged forward. If we feel defeated and forlorn, divine Love is there to hold us up. If we feel neglected or abandoned, ever-present Love will fill our emptiness as we humbly turn to Her for comfort.

Understanding God as Mother frees us from a hurtful past. It fills our heart with a sense of being valued and cherished. And it keeps us from feeling that we are lacking and disadvantaged. It releases us from looking to a person or persons for comfort.

There is never a moment when we could be separated from this Love. It’s impartial, so one of Love’s children cannot be loved more nor less than another. There is no competition for this love. It’s never withheld or given out arbitrarily. It’s totally devoted, remains constant, and is always available.

The more we identify mothering qualities as expressions of God’s love for us, the more we’ll see them in our experience – in the kindness of a neighbor, the support of a co-worker, the guidance of a teacher, or the forgiveness of a friend, etc.

Through Nancy’s expression of mothering qualities, I began to appreciate God’s motherhood. If you think you’ve missed out on mothering – either on giving or receiving it – know that your Mother-God is always with you, and that you are valued in Her eyes.

Valerie Minard writes regularly on the connection between consciousness, spirituality, and health. She is a Christian Science practitioner and the media and legislative spokesperson for Christian Science in New Jersey. Contact her at newjersey@compub.org or on Twitter @valerieminard.

This week’s blog is by colleague, David L. Price, from Denver Colorado.

By David L. Price

The conversation around gender is in the spotlight; in many circles it is hotly debated. Gender and marriage, the effects of too much of one gender, even gender and self-identification are just a few of the conundrums many are trying to navigate. And then there is the fear that straying from the norm might be harmful; children might be affected; our very cultural legacy might be marred. Wow, that seems like a lot to wrap our collective heads around.

In a time when studies show the health benefits of social bonds created by friends and family and the effect those bonds have on longevity (love makes us healthier and live better and longer), doesn’t the very act of allowing these debates to divide friends and family seem counterintuitive? At worst, it has the tendency to disconnect us from the very human networks that might be a catalyst for better health and longer, more fulfilling lives.

This gender debate has taken different forms over the millennium. When I grew up in the seventies, gender roles were being debated in a different way – should mothers continue to stay home with their children or be allowed to work in the same industries as their husbands?

As a child I learned first hand that parents aren’t relegated just to “motherly” and “fatherly” things respectively. I remember my father fixing our breakfasts, setting up car-pools, mending our clothing, and working with me on homework while my mom was in another city finishing her graduate degree. (Ok maybe he took our clothing to the dry-cleaners to get mended.)

This brief part of our childhood was the impetus that led my kid sister and me to wish our dad a Happy Mother’s Day and our mom a Happy Father’s Day. The wish was meant as an all-encompassing way to celebrate something deeper than parenting gender paradigms. It was to acknowledge our mom’s and dad’s unique ways of expressing a fuller male and female type of Love.

This idea, radical for some even now, was not so for Mary Baker Eddy, a woman in the late 1800s who went against commonly accepted roles relegated to women. She discovered and founded a protestant religion, published a best-selling book, 3 magazines and an international newspaper; and, all of that in a day when women couldn’t yet vote. Referring to the Divine as “Our Father/Mother God”, she made it clear that God was not only infinite but that infinitude had to include both genders.

But she didn’t end there, the conversation around gender was a conversation about Love and the qualities each individual expresses as an image of Love. She writes in her seminal book, “The intelligent individual idea, be it male or female, rising from the lesser to the greater unfolds the infinitude of Love.”

This unfathomable Love that rises above gender might seem a bit too religious for some. But when it comes to celebrating Fathers and Mothers on a specific date, no one is celebrating the things parents do wrong, they are celebrating the highest parenting qualities; all the things that parents do right. And one way to distill that down to a single idea is to define parenting in terms of Love. We are celebrating how much parents love and how they express that Love.

So, what if we let go of gender roles when it comes to, say, parenting and instead look more at the myriad ways and the depth Love is expressed. The implication? Parenting no longer becomes about which parent does what, how many parents are involved or what gender they are, but instead how each parent is engaged in more effective ways to love.

That’s just what a friend had to do years ago when his daughter informed him and his wife she had made the choice to live the rest of her life as a man. This child then later married and adopted a child. To overcome his initial disapproval of that choice and fear for his child’s future, my friend realized he needed to see things differently. So, he chose to see all the ways his child reflected both female and male qualities – qualities created by a God who is both Father and Mother. In this way he let go of assigning roles to gender and instead saw and felt the importance of the love his child expressed as a spouse and a parent. This wasn’t done overnight, but with slow, incremental steps he was able to change his perception and just love more.

In doing this, he himself was able to set aside the commonly assigned role of a father and cultivate the more motherly qualities of compassion, acceptance and unconditional love. His experience then became about his growth in Love, not just someone else’s decisions about gender.

If we are looking at physical traits alone – gender found in body parts, strength in muscle mass, beauty in a 3-tiered number that starts with 36, or height/weight ratios – then we are shooting too low in how we define not only others but also ourselves.

Will wishing dads Happy Mother’s Day alone heal the current conversation on gender? Probably not. But the recognition that we are, in the highest sense, both moms and dads, able to express the spiritual love that comes from a divine and infinite source, may go a long way in uplifting the conversation about gender to something that is true about all of us.

David Price writes on the connection between health, thinking and spirituality. A former attorney, David is the media and legislative representative for Christian Science in Colorado. David is also a Christian Science practitioner with an expertise in prayer-based healing. The original article appeared at The Pueblo Chieftain. Contact him at colorado@compub.org.

Forgive and Forget – that’s what “they” say. Often, a lot easier said than done! But, is there something to that old saying? Could it be that by not forgiving and forgetting, the grudge could be making you sick?

It was Mother’s Day – a time for a loving visit with my mother in Ohio – the last thing on my mind was an altercation with a family member! We had experienced a harmonious family day and I was looking forward to the next day’s activities. That’s when my teenaged daughter made a comical comment to someone and it was taken completely out of context. This family member then spoke harshly to my daughter and to me. The words she said stung and hurt deeply. No matter how we reasoned with her, she refused to budge off of her position. She then attempted to draw other family members into the drama, but to no avail. At that point, the atmosphere became so heated, it appeared my daughter and I would have to leave for our home in Tennessee at almost midnight!

As I began packing my suitcase to leave, my compassionate teenager reminded me that God loved us all and that we were here for her grandmother and that leaving would grieve Mom on Mother’s Day far more than this episode had. She begged me to reconsider. Wow! Leave it to a child to remind me that I was choosing to neither feel nor express God’s love.

Long story short, we stayed and had a pleasant next day with family. When it was time to leave, I hugged my relative and verbally accepted her somewhat weak apology, but brought the hurt in my heart home with me.

Over the next weeks and months, I struggled with it, feeling sick and having pains around my heart every time I thought about future family get-togethers. I prayed for God to help me see her as He sees her – good and loved. I held to scriptures such as “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew) I wanted to be a peacemaker, but it seemed I was a grudge-maker instead!

To make matters worse, conversations with my mother always included mentioning this other family member. I could tell the conflict was weighing heavy on her and she was extremely sad about it since the holidays were approaching.

And, then I happened upon an article written by a colleague where she tells about healing from a confrontation she had had with someone. I knew that same strength and resolution that came from her Christian practice was available to anyone, including me, if I was willing to let go of the grudge I was holding!

An article entitled Taking Offense by Christian healer Mary Baker Eddy included two lines that really spoke to me: “The mental arrow shot from another’s bow is practically harmless unless our own thought barbs it.” and “…we can hardly afford to be miserable for the faults of others.”

I concluded that forgiving my relative didn’t mean she had to change her position, or her behavior, concerning the subject about which we argued. That wasn’t the point. I had to pray to change my reaction!

In my endeavor to forgive, I also happened upon a Mayo Clinic article where they document studies that suggest that forgiveness leads to:

• Healthier relationships

• Greater spiritual and psychological well-being

• Less anxiety, stress and hostility

• Lower blood pressure

• Fewer symptoms of depression

I certainly wanted to experience all these results! At the same time, I truly wanted to forget this whole thing had never happened. But, I couldn’t forget it until I truly forgave her. And, when I had that “change of heart” that finally enabled me to forgive and forget – you guessed it, the physical illness, including chest pains, went away. I’ve had several phone conversations with my family member in the past few weeks and I can tell we have moved past that event.

Interestingly, this past weekend, I attended a conference in Seattle where Iyanla Vanzant was a guest speaker. You guessed it – her topic was forgiveness! She spoke about the deep hurt (and healing) that she experienced after her husband left her for her close friend. Her words reflect my sentiments exactly: “What I learned during my 30-year sojourn through the science of personal and spiritual growth and healing is that forgiveness will cure whatever ails you.”

Debra writes about the connection between thought, spirituality and wellness. She has been published in the UK, chattanoogan.com, UK Health Triangle Magazine, Jackson Sun Health Magazine, and in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. She is also the media and legislative liaison for Christian Science for Tennessee. The original article appeared in the chattanoogan.com.